As “The Man Who Invented Christmas” tells it, Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) took inspiration for “A Christmas Carol” from a waiter named Marley and a real-life miser who said “humbug.” And before Dickens could finish the book, he had to exorcise aspects of Scrooge from himself — to find kindness in his heart for his proud but poor father (Jonathan Pryce), and to pay attention to his wife (Morfydd Clark), who accuses him of caring more about his characters than his family.

Like “Shakespeare in Love” and “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus,” “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” adapted — rather fancifully — from the nonfiction book by Les Standiford, endorses the theory that artists are secret documentarians. True, the movie doesn’t ascribe everything in “A Christmas Carol” to autobiography: Dickens also has conversations with his characters, who, led by Christopher Plummer as Scrooge, appear to him like the Christmas ghosts and help him through his writer’s block. An Irish housemaid (Anna Murphy) also gives him notes.

Brightly lit and anchored by Mr. Stevens’s infectious, live-wire performance, the film, directed by Bharat Nalluri (“Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day”), nevertheless proceeds like a television holiday special, designed to distract children while winking at their parents. Interesting historical tidbits — William Makepeace Thackeray (Miles Jupp) appears as a periodic irritant for the protagonist — share screen time with a fair amount of whimsical nonsense that explains away Dickens’s imagination, prose style and gift for names with what Orson Welles called “dollar-book Freud.”